


how to fall upwards

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (That Just Needed To Be Remembered), Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes Returns, Coney Island, Established Relationship, Fluff, Kissing in the Rain, Love, M/M, Memories, Pining Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovery, Reunions, Romance, Schmoop, Steve Rogers Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 11:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3118478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>They've lived together for months, now; but Steve's still been waiting for Bucky to come <span class="u">home</span>.</i><br/> </p><p>What happens when the waiting is over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how to fall upwards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luninosity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/gifts).



> For [luninosity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity): and wait, okay, so there's totally a story behind this fic. Not that I wouldn't have just written you a giftfic anyway because you're lovely, but this particular instance of a giftfic has a story. Because when I asked if you want a fic-me-up (which is my new punny way of referring to my random offers of fic-oriented pick-me-ups, you should probably not have encouraged my bad puns in [your left-hand man](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2755217/chapters/6176753), because I will run with that, make no mistake): but—you prompted me with post- _Winter Soldier_ hopeful recovery stuff, and then, though, you wanted the rain. And I was like, ooo, rain! One of my tried-and-true, go-to reference/metaphor/scene-setting tools, oh, that will be wonderful, yep, rain. Can totally do that!
> 
> Except I gave you _no fucking rain_.
> 
> Like, I think there was a single passing comparison to rain. And I so _pissy_ at myself, because like, I'd actively wanted to use this thing that I use ALL THE TIME, and I FAILED TO USE IT. Like, what is that? So I said: no. I will absolutely write a thing with the rain in it, and gift it properly. I'll even make it a holiday ficlet, oh yes. Wonderful notion. Fool-proof.
> 
> Then the holidays actually happened, bringing with them their usual nonsense, and I was swamped with work and I barely even managed to turn in my actual gift-exchange fics on time (I totally was overdue with one of my Yuletide ficlets, even, I mean, come ON, self!) and what ended up happening was I gifted you no fic on-time, and the one I'm now gifting you DOES involve rain, though by no means how I'd originally figured rain might factor in. So. Right.
> 
> There's some rain here. That's basically the point, really. Good? Great.
> 
> My thanks to [speakmefair](http://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair) for looking at the work-in-progress, and to [Vladimir Nabokov](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/50532-do-not-be-angry-with-the-rain-it-simply-does) for the title.

_“Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”  
—Vladimir Nabokov_

The run is long; the air is thick. The rain is coming.

But not yet.

They grab a coffee after they finish, but Sam begs off quick; and if Steve’s honest, he’s grateful. He’s always grateful for Sam Wilson—for the man’s presence, for his quiet fortitude, for the support he offers beyond asking, undeserved. For the way he understands what Steve can’t speak or justify. 

The rain is coming. 

But that’s not the reason that Steve rushes home.

It’s probably a strange thing; or if not a strange thing, then it’s a foolish thing, a hopeless thing: a lovesick thing. It’s probably a thing he should stop, because it’s been months, now, and for all that those months have killed him they have been the best months he’s known since the ice and that’s pathetic, that is fucking pathetic and he knows it, he’s not goddamn stupid.

But it’s been months now—months since the remnants of what S.H.I.E.L.D. had become brought the Winter Soldier in; months since that crown was laid atop the mountain of ways that Steve has failed the only person who ever _really_ mattered; months since Steve had locked himself inside that containment cell with Bucky and demanded clemency until Bucky was sound enough of body and mind to grant them leave to test, to question, to evaluate all the things that Steve already knows: that Bucky never could have wanted, would never have stood for what was done in his name, to his will, with his hands but not his _heart_ , god _damnit_ —Steve won’t let them touch Bucky. Steve won’t leave Bucky to the wolves. Not again.

The first time Steve hears that voice, it’s rasping. It comes from nowhere.

 _Let them take me_.

Steve barely feels the world give way beneath him as agents swarm the room, as Bucky doesn’t blink as they usher him away—permission given.

Clemency rescinded.

Steve still doesn’t know if it counts as a failure— _another failure_ —if, in giving Bucky the freedom to choose, Steve surrenders him to hands that don’t understand, that won’t be gentle, that won’t—

Steve doesn’t know. Steve doesn’t think he’ll ever know.

It feels like failure, though. It feels very much like failure. 

In the end, Bucky’s cleared—the scar tissue, the leaked documents, MRIs and genetic workups and the sparse but telling records that arrive anonymously, chicken-scratched German compounds and hurried Cyrillic script; it’s clear on paper that James Buchanan Barnes was always more prisoner than traitor. And Steve should breathe easier, at that.

But when Bucky’s cleared, he goes home with Steve.

And when Bucky goes home with Steve, it becomes painfully obvious that the first words Steve had heard his best friend, his whole heart, his _everything_ speak to him in that cell; those words that had broken and made the floor crumble so completely that there was nothing left to stop Steve’s fall: those _words_.

It becomes painfully clear that the first words that Steve heard from Bucky’s lips in the better part of a century may very well have also been the last.

Because Bucky doesn’t speak. And at first, that’s okay. At first, that makes all the sense in the world and yes, Steve aches for it, because of what it means, what it speaks _to_ , what the silence betrays in _volumes_ —but it makes sense.

And it’s fine.

But days turn into weeks, turn into months. Bucky spends most of his time alone, door closed firmly and Steve wants to test it, sometimes: wants to see if it’s locked when he knocks, when he tells Bucky’s there’s dinner, or he’s leaving for an hour, for the day—when he wishes Bucky goodnight and gets quiet as a rule, a grunt of acknowledgement as the glorious exception. Days turn into weeks turn into months, and Bucky’s dreams are quiet. If he even dreams.

Steve cannot imagine that he doesn’t dream, though—and maybe that’s the worst part. Maybe knowing that Bucky has to be hurting, if he’s Bucky—and Steve knows, Steve _knows_ that he is _Bucky_ : but the fact that he has to be hurting, and he does it alone; that he hides it, that he swallows it like he’s still theirs, like he’s still not allowed to ache and grieve and scream it ‘til he’s boneless in the face of all that’s been lost; the fact that Steve can’t touch, or hold, or at least just sit beside the man he loves more than there are words that fit on the tongue—that might just be what cuts the deepest.

There are days, sometimes chains of them in a row, where Steve doesn’t even see Bucky’s face. Where Steve hears the creak of Bucky’s bed, or the water in the shower, or the clinking of cutlery in the kitchen after the meal’s long gone cold—and sometimes, he doesn’t even get that to soothe the desperate running of his mind, the darkening of his thoughts, the what-ifs and the worst-cases and Steve can’t fucking keep his limbs from trembling with the way his heart fucking _pounds_ , pounds even as he tells himself that he didn’t drink enough today to have caused all the dirty glasses in the sink on his own; even as he knows his Jules Verne books were in a different order on the shelf, last time _he’d_ touched them; even when his hearing is good, so good now but Bucky’s breathing is so soft, almost nonexistent but Steve can press his ear to Bucky’s door and he can hear it, he is _sure_ that he can hear it and it’s not just an echo of the blood on his own veins, it’s not just wishful thinking, it isn’t, Bucky’s here, Bucky’s safe, he isn’t gone, not again—

Jesus fucking _Christ_.

And it’s been a chain of days like that, in the now: it’s a chain of that that he’s rushing home in the hope of seeing broken and he’s more breathless with that prospect, with that foolish, hateful hope than he’d been on the last lap around the Reflecting Pool, and he’s pathetic, he is _pitiful_ because that hope, that impossible, unfounded, twisted wretched _hope_ is sweeter on Steve’s tongue than the stray cherry blossoms floating across his vision on the Mall, than the air tinged with their softness, with their scent: it is _better_ , just the hint of possibility, and Steve is _pathetic_.

He knows it.

The clouds are gathering, closer—the rain is coming.

He closes his eyes with his hands on the door to their apartment, and he breathes. 

He turns the lock.

The sight that greets him sinks heavy in his gut: the silence, the still—it’s the norm, if he’s honest, but he’d hoped. He goes to the fridge, and grabs for the gallon of milk, and he turns, he brings to to his lips but he doesn’t get to drink from it, he doesn’t get that far.

His hand goes slack. The carton slips, falls, spills everywhere. He freezes.

His heart fucking _stops_.

Because the balcony isn’t big, but it’s big enough: and the door out toward it is open, flung wide, and there’s a rumble in the distance where the thunder’s starting to build and there’s a body—still, and silent—sprawling across the threshold, and it's dark, the storm is coming, but what light remains reflects on the left arm stretched out, limp and splayed wide, and Steve’s running, good _god_ but he’s scrambling because he’s watching Bucky’s chest and it’s not moving, not that he can see, and Bucky’s breathing is soft, so soft, almost nonexistent but Steve can’t see, he can’t _see_ —

He’s on his knees at Bucky’s side, bent over Bucky’s body as his hand darts to the side of Bucky’s neck, fingers poised to touch and he can’t breathe, he can’t _breathe_ through the what-ifs, through the _please no_ that is driving through his veins like ice, he _can’t_.

But he does, he touches that skin but before he can process, before he can register either the warmth beneath his fingertips or the pulse that pumps deeper, deeper still—before any sense can be made of either sensation, before it can soothe the terror that pervades, his hand is covered, pressed harder, closer, fuller against Bucky’s neck: his palm is guided so that it cups the echoing, hammering force of Bucky’s thrumming blood where it crashes up against his skin and when Steve blinks, when he looks, he meets wide eyes that shouldn’t hold color in the dim, except they do.

Dear god, but they _do_.

And Steve can’t move, can’t think: Steve puts up no fight because there’s never been a fight against this man, only ever a fight _for_ him—and Steve can only feel, can only observe above the thrashing of his own heart when Bucky guides Steve’s hand down the line of his throat, the curl of his collarbone to rest the heel of Steve’s palm tight against Bucky’s sternum, and Bucky’s eyes never falter, never blink as he stares into Steve, as Bucky holds Steve’s open hand against the heavy, heady pumping of his own heart just as he reaches up with his hand, the left hand, and Steve's pulled lower, lower until Bucky’s open mouth is all that he sees, until lips hit lips and Bucky exhales against him, inside him, breathless and weightless and fuck, but Bucky’s lips are smooth, Bucky’s tongue is running the seam of Steve’s lips and Jesus, _Jesus_ —

“That’s it,” Bucky breathes out, pulling back: unblinking, still, but the gleam in his eyes is from far away, from long ago: so present in the now that it makes Steve’s body seize up, makes him feel like he might cease to be if he moves, if he tests it too hard, this miracle of flesh and blood and bone and _light_. 

“Man _alive_ , that is _it_ ,” Bucky whispers, metal fingers threaded in the give of Steve’s hair as he murmurs, soft and strong and reverent:

“ _Stevie_.”

And Steve needs to blink, needs to determine whether this is true, whether this is real: whether he’s just tasted home for the first time in decades; whether the way Bucky’s staring at him like he’s a revelation of truth and need and want is incontestable fact. He needs to blink.

He fucking _can’t_ , though; he cannot _risk it_.

“Coffee,” Bucky exhales, licks his lips: those eyes are still ablaze with wonder.

“Stopped with Sam,” Steve says, slow, rote: he can’t process, he can’t think beyond the burn, the heavenly sting left by Bucky’s lips atop his own, too sharp, too vivid, too perfect to be real but then too constant, too much like everything Steve’s been unable to imagine just _right_ for so _long_.

“Your momma’s,” Bucky’s smiling, and Steve’s chest clenches harsh, fucking _painful_ for it: “So sweet,” and yeah, Steve’s ma had always saved the sugar up for special occasions, only ever let her boys touch a cup o’ joe if it was cloying like a cake. 

“Spoiled us,” Bucky breathes, and his eyes flutter closed, and Steve gets lost in the infinite splay of his lashes, the definition of his jaw, the bones of his cheeks like the origin of language and knowing, everything Steve ever was or could hope to be wrapped up in what he feels for the man he’d known, for the man he’d lost, for the man in front of him here and now beyond all sense or hope—except no, not beyond hope: inside hope, wrapped tight in all Steve’s foolish fucking _hopes_ and please, please let this be real, _please_ —

“Bucky?”

It’s every question he can’t ask, but needs answered, and maybe that’s the blinking he can’t force: maybe that’s the way he tests this moment, this pressure around his heart. Bucky always knew him, Bucky could always read what Steve couldn’t say.

The need inside that name: if it’s read, if it’s seen, maybe that.

Maybe that will make this true.

“You gotta understand, Steve,” Bucky voice goes low, goes hoarse, and Steve’s hand’s still pressed firm against his heart so Steve knows it, Steve can feel it as the muscle start to push heavier against his touch—faster, even as it’d already been racing.

“You _gotta_ understand, when it starting coming back, it was just in flashes, little fragments with all the blank space in the middle, all sorts of holes, and it was almost worse like that, because the bad was crystal clear and then there were just glimpses of all the maybes I couldn’t hold onto, couldn’t—” 

Bucky’s talking, and the sound of his voice is a thing that Steve knew he’d been missing, been _aching_ for down to his _bones_ but the knowledge doesn't match the way it feels, the way that timbre shakes through his veins, the way that pitch and the flow of the words wash over him: more than Steve had dared to dream he’d ever know again, tripping over themselves in that way Bucky’d always had when he was nervous, when his heart was overfull, when he was overwhelmed and Steve just wants to reach, just wants to reach and grab him and pull him so close but Steve can barely move; Steve can barely breathe.

Steve can’t convince himself to stop holding the pulse of Bucky’s _life_ under his palm for so much as an instant, and so he just listens, and tries his damnedest to draw an inhale that doesn’t shake. 

“And I didn’t want to fall into the gaps, I didn’t,” Bucky licks his lips and Steve can feel it, the motion of it because they’re still so close, and he can taste Bucky on the air between them, all salt and tang and musk and savour and when Bucky’s hands tighten—one around the hand at Bucky’s chest, the other at the nape of Steve’s neck, Steve can’t help but shiver, can’t help but whimper in the very back of his throat as Bucky breathes:

“I didn’t want to lose _you_ in the gaps.”

Steve lifts his eyes to meet Bucky’s once more, and his own chest’s curved, hovering near the line of Bucky’s ribs and Steve can feel the resonance of the humming of his pulse, the live wire of everything he _is_ being risked in that rhythm, that endless quivering beat that wants, that _wants_.

“But then,” Bucky’s saying again, Bucky’s breathing’s so quick, so shallow beneath Steve’s hand, against Steve’s lips. “Then I was afraid, I was so afraid, I couldn’t stop shaking with how goddamn _scared_ I was because I needed it to be real. I needed all of it to be real, I needed it to be _mine_ before I could meet you with it halfway, before I could breathe through it if it wasn’t true, if I put it all together wrong, if I shoved things into the wrong order or if I made one thing fit another just because the right piece hadn’t come yet, d’ya understand?”

And it’s a rush, the whole of it, the confession and the feeling and the reasons and the whys, but Steve hears it, he does, if only just the whisper of it, the subtle rustle underneath the pounding in his ears: he hears it, but it doesn’t quite sink in, it doesn’t quite penetrate the surface where it feels like balm and warmth and life against every inch of Steve’s body, somehow: every piece of his soul that he thought would never feel whole again and it’s terrifying, it’s too much, it can’t be _true_ , can it, could it, this—

“I couldn’t, Stevie. I couldn’t risk,” Bucky whispers, the words choked harsh as he shakes his head then lifts his chin as his hand on Steve’s neck eases him down, just a hair, just enough for their lips to touch: not a kiss, this time, just the felt shape of words held sacred, kept safe between two mouths. 

“And I’m sorry if I scared you, too, or if I hurt you,” he murmurs, lips dragging, warm and slick against Steve’s as he breathes it, as he pants heavy and strained: “I’m sorry, I’m so _sorry_.”

Steve wants to say, to find words, to speak out the flailing, shrieking heart of him: he wants to say there’s no need, no place for apologies, here, because the only thing that would call for them would be if this isn’t real.

And if this isn’t real, Steve’s not sure he’ll survive the blow of it, either way.

“But it’s okay now.” Bucky’s hand slides to Steve’s cheek and strokes there, fits there like it always had, like it always would. “It’s okay. I’ve got it now.” 

Bucky breathes, and Steve can feel the way his lips curve upward as he purses his mouth and kisses soft, feather-light and so slow that it maybe happens, maybe doesn’t, and it’s only the flutter in Steve’s chest that gives it away as a truth.

“There aren’t any empty spaces. It all fits,” and Bucky splays his fingers, then, and laces flesh between flesh above the birdsong of his heartbeat; reaches, and tangles metal up with skin, tight and clear and true.

“There’s nowhere to get lost.”

“Bucky,” Steve mouths, the heart in his throat choking down the sound; and if they weren’t so close, if they weren’t breathing in each other’s air, if they weren’t the only thing to see from either set of eyes then maybe Bucky would have missed it, and maybe Steve would have feared the word lost: except Bucky’s pupils widen, Steve can watch it. Bucky’s blood trips on the way out of his heart, Steve can feel it. Bucky’s whole frame shivers under Steve’s touch just to see the shape of his name on Steve’s lips and oh god, oh _god_.

“Bucky,” Steve forces the rasp of a sound because he needs to know, he needs to know beyond any doubt whether his heart’s lying, whether his soul’s desperate enough to believe in a myth because it _needs_ that goddamned _bad_ : “What are you sayin—”

The words die on his tongue, because his hands touch the tip of another: Bucky’s got Steve’s fingers pressed to the soft give of his lower lip, the full pout spilling open under the pressure and that ever-nimble tongue drifting out to curl around Steve’s fingertips, slide to the knuckle and suck them between his teeth, hot and sinful and perfect, and Steve’s chest is all fire and ashes, and the drumbeat at his core is too wild to contain and he means to moan but it’s a sob, god _damn_ but it’s a sob when Bucky laves around each digit, loving and practiced and swift while somehow slow before he pulls back, exhales soft but pointed so the stream of air catches the wetness on Steve’s skin, sends him reeling.

“Same.”

Steve blinks at him, breathing hard and fast and his mouth’s dropped open wide enough that he thinks his heart could fall from it; he damn well thinks it might and Bucky’s looking back at him with the kind of wonder you save for the stars, for the revelation of life and the cheating of death and he breathes out:

“Your hands are the same.”

And the sobs were just sounds, before; before.

Not now.

But Bucky doesn’t stop him, doesn’t try to stall the way the hurting starts to stream out from his eyes: just cranes his neck to kiss the trails as they come, just leaves Steve’s hand on its own at his chest and reaches both palms wide to frame Steve’s face, to wipe at the tears along his cheekbones and bring their mouths together once more, and this time Steve falls into it, wholly and without restraint because it’s real, it’s real, and if it’s not Steve won’t leave it, won’t give it up for a world that strikes any less true in his heart than this, than here, than Bucky warm and pressed against him, his taste like the past come to life once more on Steve’s lips as they lick, as they nip, as they turn and angle and reach and explore the backs of teeth and the undersides of tongues and drink of it, of them: full and long and so fucking sweet and Steve cries for it, he sobs for it but Bucky breathes it in, Bucky holds it on the pads of his thumbs and Steve tastes the salt of both their mourning in between kisses that will bruise, but only half so deep as they save, and oh: but Bucky’s here. Bucky’s breathing, and speaking, and touching, and solid— _oh_.

But it’s _real_.

“Coney Island,” Bucky gasps, and now it’s his hand on Steve’s chest, making the giddy-reckless pumping there all the more pronounced as Steve cups Bucky’s jaw on either side and marvels at him, chest heaving with what it means, with all that it _means_ when he climbs over Bucky’s torso, when Steve straddles his body and feels Bucky’s heat between his thighs: when thunder crashes, swift and harsh somewhere above them and it’s faint, it’s weak, it’s a wisp on the breeze compared to the torrent of the pulse Steve sucked between Bucky’s lips; compared to the riotous shaking, the unforgiving crashing of the tides that Bucky’s pressing a hand against as he breathes, as they breathe, and Coney Island.

Steve stills, stares: quirks a brow.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky gasps. “The hill, the _Cyclone_ ,” and his hand is flat on Steve’s chest, but it moves, shifts: massages ever so slightly at the hard muscles above the soft, shaking one that he’s after, that his fingers almost seem to twitch against the urge to hold.

“I never noticed it,” Bucky exhales heavy, reeling, desperate and teeming: overrun. “I never noticed how bad it was, the way the hill would make your stomach drop because it was nothing, it wasn’t a goddamn _thing_ compared to how you made me feel, how you took the bottom out of _everything_ when I just _looked_ at you and so I didn’t even think, I didn’t even realize when I asked you to ride with me, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

And Steve wonders if the body knows when it’s loved, if it remembers after loss more than the mind, more than the soul: he wonders if the actual beating heart in him, if the straining muscles and the shivering bones—he wonders if they know the gift they’ve been given. He wonders if they feel the restoration, the sense of return and revival in this. He wonders if he’s breathless for the feelings, or if it’s somehow remembered in his lungs—the difference in the way air moves when there is a reason for being, versus when one goes without.

Steve wonders. Steve leans and catches Bucky’s lips again, sucks long and hard until they swell, until the pulse in them is full and they shine red and when they break apart they’re panting hard enough that even if Steve’s propped himself up on his hands above Bucky’s body, they’re close enough, they gasp full and deep enough that their chests touch: intimate.

 _Home_.

“End of the season,” Bucky whispers, drags his parted lips down Steve’s jawline, mouths at his neck and sucks at the pulse point as his hand curls around the curve of Steve’s skull: “Dandelion in your hair. Reached to brush it,” and Bucky’s lips are at the notch of Steve’s throat, tasting the rush of his blood as he exhales, hot and wet and full: “Wanted to taste.”

And Steve remembers it, now: how close they’d been, how soft the air had felt in his lungs, how a slighter body and a lousy heart had barely stood a chance against the way he’d _hurt_ to grab Bucky’s wrist and bring it straight to his lips and hold it there until Bucky understood all the wanting, all the feeling, all the love that kept him fighting, all the need that held him to this plane, this time and place because he couldn’t leave, he couldn’t just give up when there was Bucky, no matter how, no matter where their line was drawn, no matter that Steve wanted more than anything to strip that damned line at its start and press himself into Bucky until they couldn’t tell where their separate selves were shaped.

“Your whole chest was rising when you breathed,” Bucky’s telling the jut of Steve’s collarbone; “and your cheeks were almost _rosy_ , Steve, and fuck,” he bites soft against the skin stretched thin along the bone and Steve gasps, Steve keens and arches into the sting.

“ _Fuck_ , but I believed in God, that day,” Bucky confesses not the sin of it, more the _light_ in it and he pulls back, takes Steve in from beneath his lashes, and Steve’s breath catches, holds: refuses to break the still.

“And I look at you, now,” Bucky murmurs. “I look at you now and I think,” and his hand’s on Steve again, and he’s marveling at the face of the infinite, the swell of the deep: “ _Maybe_.”

He kisses the tip of Steve’s clavicle and drags his mouth once more to the space in between where Steve’s heart can be felt when it pounds as Bucky whispers, a secret to the God he can’t ensure:

“Maybe.”

The clouds open just as Bucky does, body yielding to Steve wholly, unbound and Steve eases the shirt that’s already clinging off of Bucky’s skin just in time for his chest to catch the first drops that fall, just in time to taste rain off Bucky’s flesh as Bucky arches up into the press of Steve’s lips, cants his hips to roll the hard line of him fully into Steve’s own arousal, Steve’s inconceivable need for this, for him, held tight across decades and burned long, fierce into the strings in his heart and the fibres of his bones.

“Stevie,” Bucky whispers, and there’re raindrops on his lashes, on the bow of his mouth when he breathes, and Steve’s chest throbs like nothing he’s ever known before because it’s too much, he’s too full, so when he speaks it’s swollen with meaning, with so many years of believing that any wholeness in his heart would forever be a lost cause.

“ _Bucky_.”

And the wait had been long. The hurt in him had learned to run thick for all the longing; the ache had deigned to gather full at the center of his chest but now he’s beating it down, beating it down, beating it down with the way his heart’s racing, pumping violent like an omen, whipping hurricane-wild and so fucking strong for all that he feels, for all that he’s waited, for all that he’s wanted and _hoped_. 

For all that he _loves_.

But the rain is falling heavy; washing. Ending. It doesn’t hide the tears that run down, drop after drop wrung straight from the soul; it doesn’t hide them. Steve’s glad for it. And they move against each other with the cadence of breathing. They breathe against each other like air means nothing in light of what this is, what they know: what’s felt and kept between. And they’re both soaked past the skin; to the bone—they’re both drenched beyond saving.

Steve doesn’t give a damn.

**Author's Note:**

> On [tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/post/107184511817/fic-how-to-fall-upwards-1-1). Shocker, I know.


End file.
